The intent of H1-B was to get talented immigrants for jobs for which we had a shortage of American labor. Instead it has become a tool for indentured labor of foreigners (especially Indians) to be used to suppress wages and exploit the foreign nationals.<p>I have suffered because of this. I spent 6 years on H1 with no end in sight. It would take at least 20 years for Indians to get a Green Card. Till then, you have to do do insane amount of paperwork, deal with lot of uncertainty when we you are up for renewal and are in a limbo state.<p>Most of my friends who are really smart and are in US, have resigned to their fate and given up on their entrepreneurial aspirations.<p>If people think that companies like Facebook and Google are not exploiting people, they are mistaken. Even though the wages that they pay are much higher - H1 creates lack of job mobility, within that class of employees. I worked with someone really smart in an earlier startup in India. He spent 7 years in Microsoft because it seemed like he will get Green Card next year.<p>I worked with someone senior at FWD.us and as per that person the intention of FWD.us is to get more H1 and not Green Cards.<p>I have lived through this and hopefully out of this cycle. However the best from India aren't moving to US anymore. They now know about the uncertainties in their life because of H1 and are choosing to stay behind in India to build startups there.<p>Big consultancy companies (TCS, Infosys, Cognizant etc) are abusing the system. I hope someone puts and end to this.<p>Edited: formatting
Of all of the candidates both Republican and Democrat (and including President Obama) only one, President Trump was not in bed with Silicon Valley and Tech companies attempting to depress American Wages and replace Americans with cheaper foreign imports. Even the University of California San Francisco (The UC system trains lots of computer scientists, IT workers) replaced its own IT workers with H1-B Visa imports.<p>What is notable is the US newspapers including NYT and WaPo don't write about this issue much. The Guardian (and Breitbart) have been the most consistent sources of information.<p>Thomas Frank had warned of the real reasons for Trump's rise staring in March 2016. Here is a July 2016 article after the BrExit vote that warned the Dems. Click on the link and you'll see Obama pictured with Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg famously want to depress American tech wages by having his own lobbying organization that tries to import more H1-B visa workers.<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/19/revenge-against-elites-americas-wake-up" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/19/reveng...</a><p>At Wednesday night’s GOP debate, Rubio was asked about his co-authorship of controversial legislation–- known as the I-Squared bill — that would triple the number of wage-depressing H-1B visas up to 195,000 per year. In Rubio’s home state of Florida, the Walt Disney Company used H-1Bs to lay off hundreds of American workers and force them to train their foreign replacements. Disney’s CEO has endorsed Rubio’s I-Squared bill.<p><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2015/10/30/h-1b-expert-marco-rubio-fakes-opposition-h-1b-outsourcing/" rel="nofollow">http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2015/10/30/h...</a><p>President Obama even allowed spouses of H1-B to work, displacing and lowering wages of yet more American workers.<p>The intent of H1-B is only for jobs for which there are no Americans available. There should be an independent commission that reviews each and every one of these applications. Frankly, it begs credulity that there are 65,000 STEM jobs that are so specialized that there are no Americans to fill the roles.
The abuse and exploitation of the h1b by Indian bodyshop and lack of action by Bush and Obama have ruined it for everyone. I hope the body shops go out of business and we get a more sane immigration visas. But we need immigration. Thinking removing immigration will make more uS jobs is stupid. It will hasten global employers to build r&d centers outside of the US and then we are all screwed.
What kind of salaries should H1-B-heavy jobs expect if the visa didn't exist?<p>I'm wondering because I get the feeling that the general populace believes these positions (programming and everything related) pay pretty well. You might get the opposite feeling when browsing HN.
How will the government assess who has the top skills? Considering that the industry has a hard time doing this in fairly intensive interview processes, I can't imagine the government will fare as well or better.<p>I, cynically, assume they're just going to be like "PHD is better than masters, is better than bachelor's" etc.
Isn't the risk that these companies will just let Indian's do the work in India instead of bringing them to the US? Won't the US loose tax money with such a setup?